The Dungeons and Dragons II: Wraith of the Dragon God spoiler filled thread.

[qstor]

I actually think this movie is so bad, it's GOOD.

The actors did not take themselves seriously; they completely "cheese-balled" it and had a great time (and it shows).

It was fun to watch; it was a lousy movie ... but it was also a hoot.

-Samir

It think it was a lot better than the first. And not so bad for a SciFi Saturday movie better than those lame creature movies like "killer swamp fish"

I think it had more D&Disms than the first by far and the story was a good flow. It would be interesting to see if they can do another movie.

Mike

 

[Drkfathr1]

Was the Black Dragon named in the movie? I thought I heard Tharizdun, the name of a Greyhawk imprisoned evil deity.

Yep, several times.

Falazure.

 

[Henry]

Jubliex is a magical engineer who makes scrying pools? He has no item creation feats, nor does he have arms to build with.

This one you can take off your list; the wizard who made the pool was Malax (or something similar) and as a human who worshipped Juiblex, he had two arms to build with quite well. ( "Berek" called him 'Jubilex' which I got a kick out of )

Can't fault most of your other critiques, though. The special effects were pretty poor to me. I'd rather had this movie's plot, with the special effects of the first movie, but you can't win 'em all.

Oh, well, back to telling everyone that the Rings Trilogy was the real D&D movie...

 

[Chaldfont]

This movie needed less plot and more action. But as my gaming buddy said as we watched it, "action is expensive". We kept saying "boxed text! Get on with it!".

I really think they should have ditched the whole "save the world from evil" business and made a movie like most adventures: A group of cynical treasure-hunters mount an expedition to kill monsters, survive traps, and get phat loot.

Best part of the movie: When the cleric gets killed by the dragon. Cleric's dead. We're screwed.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Cleric went down like a ton of bricks; they totally violated rule number 2. Also, I liked the simple DnD commercials, though if you're watching the movie you probably already play. Isn't that like preaching to the choir?

 

[dogoftheunderworld]

What really bugged me about this movie was its blatant use of so-called "D&Disms" that were horribly inaccurate; for example:

1. The hero's wife mentions that no one in the kingdom is skilled with divine magic, but the main town has a temple with practicing clerics of Obad-Hai. Furthermore, one of the party members (Dorian) is a skilled priest.

I think she said that none of the Mages could use divine magic, and she wanted to be the first, to impress the Council.

Bluff skill (?), the rogue insists no one look while he is going to use his ancient rogue guild secrets to operate a complex device, and then promptly just yanks a switch when no one looks.

I don't know about using the bluff skill, but this was definately my favorite rogue moment.


Also, seems to me that the ancient spellcasters that originally trapped the dragon were Druids ("different" magic, references to the four elements, other nature references: acorns & oak leaves, etc).

 

[Bonzi]

I found the movie to be decent and slightly better than expected. I thought the acting and story were about average for a movie shown on the Sci-Fi channel (which is to say...not very good). They made mistakes on a few things D&D related, but they got more right than wrong and considering how many people screw up the rules in home games...I think they did pretty well. As far as the Lich costume, considering the budget I had no problems with that either. It would have been great if they could have had something better but the cost of doing that would have probably blown the budget all to hell for what was a relatively minor character in the movie. I'd give it a 6 out of 10 and will probably buy the DVD mostly for any extra content.

 

[sniffles]

This was my second viewing, although the first time I didn't get to see the final 20 minutes or so. It certainly isn't the best movie I've ever seen, but I prefer it to the first one, and it's definitely better than most of Sci Fi's "original" movies.

Things I liked:
The cast was all British. That almost always makes it better for me.
The spellcasting really worked for me.
Having two of the party be female, especially the barbarian.
The rogue being an older guy. It was just nice that everyone wasn't young and "pretty" (and maybe that explains why he failed his Reflex save in the mirror trap).
Appearances of familiar monsters, especially the darkmantles.
No stupid-looking spiky armor or chainmail bikinis.
The fight scenes weren't spectacular, but at least nobody looked like they were afraid of their swords (I'm looking at you, Brigitte Nielsen in Red Sonja).

Things I didn't like:
The overacting of the wizardess Melora.
The party seemed kind of wimpy for "the greatest adventurers in the land".
Everyone kept calling the rogue "Rogue" all the time as though that was his name.
It felt like they cut some scenes that would have helped to explain things better.
Damodar suddenly became inexplicably helpless at the end.
What was up with having the fighters do backflips? That was so lame.
How the heck could the elf get her arm back if no one at the temple of Obad-Hai was even high enough level to cast remove curse?
Too much yakking about those Teranian (sp?) wizards.

Still, I'll probably buy the DVD if I can find it really cheap.

 

[Truth Seeker]

1. Don't say that to a bunch of veteran players...

2. Trying to add a coolest factor to it, since we all know, they have more of a superior skill buying pool. Then any other class.

3. Did you not see that curved smile came up, as the scene started to faded out.

4. Ah, the infamous backfkips...well, they didn't want to show, the standard bland fighter out the book, that does not have hand to hand fighting, no tumbling for those, who wear light armor, and on and on, I can go, but won't.

5. A fudged dice roll, on the DM,s.

This was my second viewing, although the first time I didn't get to see the final 20 minutes or so. It certainly isn't the best movie I've ever seen, but I prefer it to the first one, and it's definitely better than most of Sci Fi's "original" movies.

Things I liked:
The cast was all British. That almost always makes it better for me.
The spellcasting really worked for me.
Having two of the party be female, especially the barbarian.
The rogue being an older guy. It was just nice that everyone wasn't young and "pretty" (and maybe that explains why he failed his Reflex save in the mirror trap).
Appearances of familiar monsters, especially the darkmantles.
No stupid-looking spiky armor or chainmail bikinis.
The fight scenes weren't spectacular, but at least nobody looked like they were afraid of their swords (I'm looking at you, Brigitte Nielsen in Red Sonja).

Things I didn't like:
The overacting of the wizardess Melora.
1.The party seemed kind of wimpy for "the greatest adventurers in the land".
2.Everyone kept calling the rogue "Rogue" all the time as though that was his name.
It felt like they cut some scenes that would have helped to explain things better.
3.Damodar suddenly became inexplicably helpless at the end.
4.What was up with having the fighters do backflips? That was so lame.
5.How the heck could the elf get her arm back if no one at the temple of Obad-Hai was even high enough level to cast remove curse?
Too much yakking about those Teranian (sp?) wizards.

Still, I'll probably buy the DVD if I can find it really cheap.

 

[haakon1]

This was my second viewing, although the first time I didn't get to see the final 20 minutes or so. It certainly isn't the best movie I've ever seen, but I prefer it to the first one, and it's definitely better than most of Sci Fi's "original" movies.

Things I liked:
The cast was all British. That almost always makes it better for me.
The spellcasting really worked for me.
Having two of the party be female, especially the barbarian.
The rogue being an older guy. It was just nice that everyone wasn't young and "pretty" (and maybe that explains why he failed his Reflex save in the mirror trap).
Appearances of familiar monsters, especially the darkmantles.
No stupid-looking spiky armor or chainmail bikinis.
The fight scenes weren't spectacular, but at least nobody looked like they were afraid of their swords (I'm looking at you, Brigitte Nielsen in Red Sonja).

Things I didn't like:
The party seemed kind of wimpy for "the greatest adventurers in the land".
How the heck could the elf get her arm back if no one at the temple of Obad-Hai was even high enough level to cast remove curse?

I agree with the pros. This could have been SO much worse -- like Red Sonja or D&D 1. As it was, it's a credit to the game, and the most accurate presentation of it on film.

As for the cons:
"kinda wimpy" -- Yeah, this is not Forgotten Realms. I figure these folks were about 8th level. That's heroic status IMC. I figure Oberon might be 10th-12th, but he's busy.
"no remove curse, but regenerate" -- I don't know what kind of magic was turning the wizard into an undead anyhow. I think Remove Curse might not do it. Is was thinking they tried Dispel Magic and Remove Curse, needed to move on up to Break Enchantment, Mordy Disjunction, something like that. Or maybe they had a Ring or Scroll of Regeneration?

Anyhow, I think D&D 2 might be a 1st Edition game, with the Greyhawk references. That would explain the difficulty for a human wanting to learn divine magic and arcane.